Categories

June 2011

June 27, 2011

Recently Chris showed me how cool the many years of David Stark Design ads were as a collection. We never look at them like that. Rather, they have been created one by one, since 2006, over the course of several months in between, so it’s great fun to see how beautifully they hold up as their own exhibition. Thus, we are excited to post this retrospective, created in collaboration with a designer who we couldn’t be more madly in love with: Karen Hsu of Omnivore.

Karen is probably one of the most talented, inspiring people I have ever met. We have collaborated with her from day one on everything from our own identity and branding materials to invitations for parties, and our recent David Stark Design book.

We started these at the end of 2006, and they continue today as recently as one month ago, primarily created for inclusion in the print editions of BiZBash, but they sometimes find themselves in other homes too.

My premise has always been: Anything that we do will be art - whether it be our event installations, our products, or our marketing materials. I feel so lucky to have found another bird of the same feather to flock with, Karen. Thank you for inspiring me on a daily basis.

I hope you guys get as much of a kick out of these as I do. There’s no reason why an ad needs to be . . . regular. Why do ordinary?

June 20, 2011

The gals at design*sponge were kind enough to showcase the work we just did for a very special birthday celebration at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. last week, but Susie’s photos are so fabulous and so varied, that I can’t help sharing a little more with you.

I’m really proud of this one. You know, the installation looks effortless, and that is always a big part of the goal – we never want anything to look labored over. But the truth is that behind the scenes, we worked really hard to get to a new artistic place with these materials. Playing with paper and book pages a lot – whether that be for our own pop-up flower store installation or the previous David Stark for west elm holiday collection, like any artist, I don’t want to create the same painting twice. The focus on fairytales, though, led us to new ground, and we pushed the materials to create large scale and very intimate experiences so that everywhere you turned, there was a new discovery.

I LOVE the defining statement of this party, first appearing on the invitation and then as a focal point in the very center of the room within the grand, open book: “Life is made up of a series of stories. You are an important part of mine.” What a nice way to celebrate a life, by celebrating the others that have filled your world with joy. People throw themselves parties all the time, but it’s a nice change of pace to use a birthday as an opportunity to fete everyone else!

xoxo

D.

P.S. With love, Beth, for you on your birthday. I will always value our creative moments together as some of my most dear.

June 13, 2011

The unsung heroes behind the stunning photos you see in magazines, ad campaigns, and coffee table books are “stylists,” a legion of artisans that are essentially set designers for photo shoots. Helen Quinn is a brilliant stylist, but she has so many, many other talents that it is hard to accept the term “stylist” as being altogether fitting.

I’ve known Helen since we were both Freshman at the Rhode Island School of Design. Helen received a degree in Textiles, and she has spent time working in that world, teaching at Parsons, working for Martha Stewart, and styling shoots for other brands and magazines. Below is some of the eye candy that Helen is known for in the print world.

The above images were from MARTHA STEWART KIDS, photographed by Stephen Lewis

The above images were from MARTHA STEWART LIVING, shot by Simon Watson. As an event planner and a designer, I am especially drawn to these stunning food displays. I tore them out of the magazine at the time for personal inspiration, not realizing that Helen had created them!

The gorgeous images above were photographed by Yunhee Kim.

Recently I was excited to stumble across the below stop/action film that Helen had created for Martha Stewart, and was surprised at this new twist in the road of her work. Helen was kind enough to sit down and chat with me about her art.

David Stark: You are one of the most talented people that I know and are so good at so many things – from styling photo shoots for magazines, catalogues, and print campaigns to your amazing textile designs, even teaching! How did you first get into creating the stop action films that you have been making recently?

Helen Quinn: Thank you! I love the variety of creative challenges that free-lance work offers - different contexts and different constraints depending on the project. For example, a few years ago I had the chance to design a collection of women’s sportswear for Nike/Maharam and then last Winter I organized a dinner in a cranberry bog in Rockefeller Center for Martha Stewart. So when Martha TV asked me to do the stop motions for this year’s Easter special, I jumped at the chance. I have made hand-drawn animations for my artwork in the past so I was really excited to collaborate with a professional photographer for this assignment. Now I hope to do more with other clients and friends. It is such a great medium- combining old and new at the same time- and it is perfect for displaying on contemporary media such as the iPad and e-books.

DS: What kind of connection do you see between making these “films” and the two/three dimensional art that you also make?

HQ: The common thread is a fascination with movement. After graduate school (Cranbrook 2000) I was making kinetic sculptures and gouache drawings. These were investigations into the beauty and magic of movement and the elusive presence of grace.

Over the past several years I have been animating the drawings, breathing primitive life into them using a Super 8 or digital still camera, photographing frame by frame. The work is pretty rough technically, but was good practice for the more commercial stop motions I have been doing lately.

DS: Where do you get your inspiration from?

HQ: Libraries. You can often find me at the Picture Collection on 40th Street at the Mid-Manhattan Branch. I know they have images on-line but it just isn’t the same as going through the folders. My favorites are photos of antique toys, fair rides, mechanical orchestras, and alchemical images.Last year I wanted to look at illuminated manuscripts, so I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Pierpont Morgan Library looking at thousand-year-old books. I can really relate to the monks who illustrated those texts - obsessive perfectionists with wacky perspective.

DS: As a person that majored in Painting in college, I am always fascinated with my colleagues who get on the artistic train at a certain point, and find themselves in a totally different place years later. Did you ever imagine you would be doing what you do today?

HQ: I am not so surprised. If I am photo styling or teaching or making a quilt or designing a line of paint colors, I am using many of the same skills I learned in my fine art and textile training in undergrad. These include considerations of composition, color, and content as well as common sense skills of managing budget, working efficiently, and being decisive.

DS: When you are making your work, what do you think about?

HQ: When preparing to make a series of drawing or an animation, for example, I compile a ton of different sources (hence the library) and put a myriad of images on the wall. These images can be from different countries and different time periods and can be anything from a font to a wig diagram to a piece of fabric. Once I have a direction, I make a color palette and a storyboard of some kind. Then the work starts to flow, and the images and ideas get swirled around. Once I am really in it, I can’t tell if I am thinking about anything at all because I go so far into the right brain that I never know what time it is, even forgetting to eat.

DS: If budget and time were not an issue, what would the dream project be that you would love to plunge into?

HQ: The Tiffany windows! I am just dying to do the Tiffany windows. Gene Moore was the genius there for many years and I met him once when I was a very young designer in New York. He was older, southern, and charming. I can see so vividly what I would do: modern tableaux with motors. For example, a sparkly diamond could rotate on a thin wire with videos projected on paper screens from the back. And sound! Amplifying the motors and maybe some tiny bells clanging in real time. It would be very Calder’s Circus but kind of slick.

DS: It seems to me that the work you do as a stylist is very, very different from the stop action films. What do you see as the main difference in the work?

HQ: Speed is the main difference. Prop styling for print or Internet is time-consuming, and everything has to be perfect. Things are tweaked over and over, moving this vase a ¼” left or right and back again. If you make a mistake in composition, it can be corrected. With the stop-motion animations I have been working on, you really only have one take and you have to work very quickly even though it is tedious. I have been getting one minute’s worth of video for one day’s worth of work. So if there is a mistake, I have had to be very flexible and try to incorporate it into the sequence. I can’t say I have been calm about it since the pressure is really on, but I am learning a lot.

DS: What is the most interesting job you have ever had?

HQ: For two years in my twenties, I sewed for the sculptor Louise Bourgeois. It was just the two of us every Saturday morning at her brownstone in Chelsea. I would lug my sewing machine there from Brooklyn in a cart. We did some sewing but mostly we ate ice cream (Haagen-Dazs Macadamia Nut Crunch) and talked about color. What a strange gift that was for me - I didn’t even realize it at the time.

DS: Oh, WOW!

Helen Quinn is currently working on print campaigns for Target, Macy’s, and Pottery Barn as well as a music video for an upcoming CD. She is lives in Jackson Heights, Queens with her husband David Crandall, an architect and Professor at Parsons, and their two kids.

June 06, 2011

There was a time in party land where the most exciting theme was . . . Morocco! The lanterns, the rugs, the spices, the tents . . . but really, everyone has “been there, done that.” So . . . what is up next on the world decor itinerary? INDIA!

For New Yorkers for Children’s yearly Fool’s Fete, a very chic clothing shop on the Upper East Side called Soigne K was the evening’s presenting sponsor and the inspiration for all things Indian. We were delighted to have such a rich theme to explore when transforming the ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Without a doubt, we had to be inventive with the budget, so the fullness of the décor schematic is not about lavishness. Rather, it is about INVENTIVENESS.

We turned traditional saris into table cloth overlays while an array of glimmering luminaries, glowing with hot, Indian color filled the room with magic.

We rolled papers into more elaborate, elevated lanterns to give the room an element of height and scale, and at table level, the papers were pinched into glowing paisley-like shapes, all surrounding standard glass cylinders of varying size that held candles. The pattern that appears in some of the lanterns was a great trick developed by Spencer on our team. Printed on an office copy machine onto acetate and lining the interior of the frosted paper so that the pattern romantically showed through, we utilized low-tech methods to create BIG impact.

The guests, in their Indian designer gowns, added to the décor, floral leis handed out upon arrival were a lot of fun, and a troupe of Indian dancers got the guests onto the dance floor, but I do think that this was one of those occasions where the inventive décor set the stage for the rest of the elements to feel right on, and I am very proud of the magic trick. This was definitely one where we made a whole lot of somethin’ out of a whole lot of nothin’ – where the copy machine, a stack of paper, and a whole lot of elbow grease turned a hotel Ballroom into one of the most special nights of the Spring social season in New York.

A BIG Bravo to Spencer and my whole team of magic makers. I am constantly amazed by what you can accomplish.